How are Accounting Periods Defined?

When you enter a journal to SunSystems Financials you post to a particular accounting period. This period is entered on the journal transaction and is not derived from the transaction date.

The number of accounting periods in your financial year is defined in Financial Calendars (FCS) and Business Unit Setup. Entering 4 gives you quarterly accounting periods, 52 provides weekly periods, 12 (or 13) monthly periods and 365 means one day is one period. The setting in this field applies throughout the system, i.e. in all SunSystems modules for this business unit.

An accounting period is always entered in the format ppp/yyyy, where ppp is the period number and yyyy the financial year. The year number is, by convention, the year in which your accounting year ends. If you operate a monthly accounting calendar, a period must coincide with the period number in the financial year. For example, if your accounting year starts in April, then April is period one and January will be period 10. Thus April 2011, in a financial year April 2011 through to March 2012, is identified as 001/2012.

You can change the current accounting period either by entering the new period in Ledger Setup (LES), by using Change Period (CPD) or by updating the Financial Calendar Record in Financial Calendars (FCS).

You can set a separate currency period setting for each of the SunSystems modules: Financials, Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing and Inventory Control. Alternatively you can use Financial Calendars for accounting periods to be managed centrally for each module and for each group of business units.